Search Results for: Federal Reserve

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 19, 2020 ~ The Fed’s H.4.1 report was released at 4:30 p.m. today and it shows that the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet has skyrocketed to $4.7 trillion. It also shows that as of yesterday, its repo loans to the trading houses on Wall Street had soared to a total of $441.9 billion outstanding while borrowings from its Discount Window added another $28.2 billion, bringing the combined total to over $470 billion in loans outstanding. Wall Street has been receiving hundreds of billions of dollars a week in assistance from the Fed since September 17, 2019 while struggling Americans have yet to see a dime of assistance to help offset job losses from the coronavirus outbreak. The Fed doesn’t have to wait for a vote in Congress to funnel $9 trillion in cumulative loans to Wall Street. It can create an unlimited amount of … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 19, 2020 ~ U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Wall Street pundits are all over cable news, repeating the mantra that “this is nothing like the last financial crisis,” while seeking to lay the blame for all of the newly-announced bailout measures for Wall Street at the feet of the coronavirus. But in terms of Wall Street privatizing profits and socializing losses, this is exactly like the last financial crisis. Wall Street’s crisis has a specific launch date: September 17, 2019. That’s when the Fed, for the first time since the last financial crisis, began dumping hundreds of billions of dollars a week into Wall Street’s trading houses. That program, called “repo loans,” now tallies up to more than $9 trillion in cumulative loans made to Wall Street at super-cheap borrowing rates. The first article we wrote on that Fed program was dated … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 18, 2020 ~ The Federal Reserve Board of Governors announced at 6 P.M. last evening that it is following the direction of Steve Mnuchin, the former foreclosure king who now serves as U.S. Treasury Secretary, and authorizing the reinstatement of a hideously operated, multi-trillion dollar bailout program for Wall Street’s trading houses known as the Primary Dealer Credit Facility (PDCF). Veterans on Wall Street think of it as the cash-for-trash facility, where Wall Street’s toxic waste from a decade of irresponsible trading and lending, will be purged from the balance sheets of the Wall Street firms and handed over to the balance sheet of the Federal Reserve – just as it was during the last financial crisis on Wall Street. The Fed fought for years in court to keep the details of the PDCF and its sibling Wall Street bailout programs a secret … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 17, 2020 ~ The U.S. stock market set new records yesterday – all of them bad. The Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered its worst point loss in history, closing down 2,997 points at 20,188.52, which effectively erases all of its gains in the last three years. On January 20, 2017, when Donald Trump was sworn in as President, the Dow closed at 19,827. It’s now grown by just 1.8 percent in total over that span of time. The Dow also had its second worst percentage loss in history yesterday, losing 12.93 percent. That loss is only exceeded by Black Monday, October 19, 1987, when the Dow lost 22.6 percent. It barely beats out October 28, 1929 when the Dow lost 12.8 percent and ushered in what would become the worst stock market crash in history. From late 1929 to 1933 the stock market … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 14, 2020 ~ On February 12, 2020, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 29,551.42. Yesterday, March 13, the Dow closed at 23,185.62 -– a loss of 6,365.80 points in one month’s time, or 21.54 percent. In 2008, the greatest financial calamity since the Great Depression, the Dow had lost 2,339.60 points or 21.4 percent one month after the frightening events of September 15, 2008 when Lehman Brothers filed bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch had to be taken over by Bank of America, and one day before the U.S. government seized the giant insurer, AIG, because it couldn’t pay the tens of billions of dollars in derivative bets it had made with the mega banks on Wall Street. On this past Friday morning, in what appeared to be an effort to restore confidence on Wall Street, U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin gave an interview on … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 13, 2020 ~ The Federal Reserve Board of Governors has acknowledged to Wall Street On Parade that it has 233 documents that might shed some light on why JPMorgan Chase was allowed by the Fed to draw down $158 billion of the reserves it held at the Fed last year, creating a liquidity crisis in the overnight loan market according to sources on Wall Street. After taking four months to respond to what should have been a 20-business day turnaround on our Freedom of Information Act request, the Federal Reserve denied our FOIA in its entirety. (Our earlier request to the New York Fed resulted in the same kind of stonewalling. See The New York Fed Is Keeping JPMorgan’s Secrets Close to Its Chest.) The Wall Street liquidity crisis forced the Federal Reserve, beginning on September 17 of last year, to begin making … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 12, 2020 ~ There has been a lot of delusional talk about the strong capital levels of the mega banks on Wall Street, not only from the Federal Reserve, but also from Wall Street analysts spreading fantasies about the banks on cable news programs. We took an afternoon off last Friday to hear what was being said about the banks on CNBC. We were stunned to hear Mike Mayo, a long-tenured bank analyst on Wall Street, who currently works for Wells Fargo Securities, deliver a huckster-like assessment of the mega Wall Street banks. Mayo said this: “The banking industry has the strongest balance sheet in a generation. Now think about this: the banks have added $1 trillion of additional capital – that’s $1 trillion with a T; $2 trillion of additional cash; $3 trillion of additional deposits. You have a Federal Reserve stress … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: March 10, 2020 ~ President Donald Trump is bringing a pea shooter to a gunfight. If you look carefully at the charts on this page from yesterday’s trading bloodbath, it’s clear that there is a deep financial crisis playing out. The idea that this can be remedied with a payroll tax cut is the stuff of tooth fairies. And this crisis didn’t begin with the coronavirus. Headlines about the virus did not start appearing in the U.S. until January of this year. But the Federal Reserve began making hundreds of billions of dollars each week in cheap loans to Wall Street’s banks on September 17, 2019 — the first time it had done this since the 2008 financial crisis. You can earmark September 17, 2019 as the actual date that this Financial Crisis II got underway. All of the toothless financial reforms of the … Continue reading →

By Pam Martens: March 9, 2020 ~ In early afternoon trading, West Texas Intermediate, the domestic crude oil in the U.S., had lost over 20 percent on the day, 39 percent in the last 18 calendar days and 48 percent from its peak this year. The panic selling resulted from a failed OPEC meeting with its allies last week when Russia refused to go along with crude oil production cuts proposed by OPEC to shore up the price of crude. Following the failed meeting, Saudi Arabia began to dramatically discount its oil prices to customers to grab market share. It reminded me of an earlier Saudi oil price war in 1986 – without the coronavirus to add to the panic. In 1986 I was working at Shearson with newly acquired stock and commodity licenses. I had the good fortune of sitting next to a very savvy female oil trader who … Continue reading →